What Does Jeremiah 26:6 Mean?
Then I will set this house like Shiloh, and I will set this city as a curse to all the nations of the earth."
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Then will I make this house like Shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.THE KEY
The verse repeats נָתַן (natan, give, set, place): the house and city can be set into judgment, so sacred status is no shield.
THE MEANING
The house can be set like Shiloh, and the city made a curse among the nations. The verse holds the force of public ruin: a place associated with God is not automatically beyond judgment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
God’s house and city are immune from judgment simply because they belong to him.
THE ROOT
וְנָתַתִּי
venatatti
GROWS FROM
נתן
Give, set, place.
“set” in this verse is venatatti. Both “make” clauses use forms of נָתַן (natan), the verb for giving, setting, or placing. The repeated root frames the house and city as being placed into the conditions named; the same root can describe a gift or a setting in place, while here it marks judgment.
ALSO GROWS
natan: Give, set, place.
נָתַן
This is the verb behind both clauses, linking the house’s fate with the city’s.
mattanah: Gift, something given.
מַתָּנָה
This related noun shows the root’s sense of giving or placing something; here what is placed is a house and city into a condition of judgment.
קְלָלָה
qelalah
GROWS FROM
קלל
Be light or slight; make light of, treat as contemptible; in intensive use, curse.
קְלָלָה (qelalah, curse) belongs to a word family that also carries the sense of being slight or treated lightly. The city becomes a public curse among the nations: its standing is brought low, and its name becomes a warning.
ALSO GROWS
qalal: Be light or slight; make light of, treat as contemptible.
קָלַל
This verb exposes the shading beneath “curse”: the city is no longer held in honor but becomes an object of contempt.
qelalah: Curse, execration, or curse formula.
קְלָלָה
This is the word used of the city, whose fate becomes a phrase the nations can invoke as a warning.
THE PATTERN
A sacred place is not protected by sacred status when it becomes a public witness to judgment.
But go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I caused my name to settle at the first, and see what I did to it for the evil of my people Israel.Moreover I will set you as a dry ruin, and a reproach among the nations all around you, before the eyes of all who pass by.Look, your house is left to you, empty.THE THREAD
But go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I caused my name to settle at the first, and see what I did to it for the evil of my people Israel.Jeremiah 7:12 names Shiloh as the place where the LORD set his name and points to what happened there. That makes “like Shiloh” here a precise warning: bearing the divine name does not make a place untouchable.
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